Chapter 16

"Let us follow the example of all great golfers," Hamel said. "Let
us for this morning, at any rate, imagine that your whole world is
encompassed within these eighteen holes. We have been sent here in
a moment of good humour by your tyrant uncle. The sun shines, and
the wind is from the west. Why not?"

"That is all very well for you," she retorted, smiling, "but I have
topped my drive."

"Purely an incident," he assured her. "The vicissitudes of the game
do not enter into the question. I have driven a ball far above my
usual form, but I am not gloating over it. I prefer to remember
only that I am going to spend the next two hours with you."

She played her shot, and they walked for a little way together.
She was suddenly silent.

"Do you know," she said finally, just a little gravely, "I am not
at all used to speeches of this sort."

"Then you ought to be," he declared. "Nothing but the lonely life
you have been living has kept you from hearing them continually."

She laughed a little at the impotence of her rebuff and paused for
a moment to make her next shot. Hame1, standing a little on one
side, watched her appraisingly. Her short, grey tweed skirt was
obviously the handiwork of an accomplished tailor. Her grey
stockings and suede shoes were immaculate and showed a care for her
appearance which pleased him. Her swing, too, revealed a grace,
the grace of long arms and a supple body, at which previously he
had only guessed. The sunshine seemed to have brought out a copper
tinge from her abundant brown hair.

"Do you know," he remarked, "I think I am beginning to like your
uncle. Great idea of his, sending us off here directly after
breakfast."

Her face darkened for a moment, and he realised his error. The
same thought, indeed, had been in both their minds. Mr. Fentolin's
courteous suggestion had been offered to them almost in the shape
of a command. It was scarcely possible to escape from the
reflection that he had desired to rid himself of their presence for
the morning.

"Of course," he went on, "I knew that these links were good - quite
famous, aren't they?"

"I have played on so few others," she told him. "I learned my golf
here with King, the professional."

He took off his cap and handed it to his caddy. He himself was
beginning already to look younger. The long blue waves came
rippling up the creeks. The salt wind, soft with sunshine, blew
in their faces. The marshes on the landward side were mauve with
lavender blossom, In the distance, the red-tiled cottages nestled
deep among a background of green trees and rising fields.

"This indeed is a land of peace," he declared. "If I hadn't to
give you quite so many strokes, I should be really enjoying myself."

"You don't play like a man who has been living abroad for a great
many years," she remarked. " Tell me about some of the places you
have visited?"

"Don't let us talk seriously," he begged. "I'll tell you of them
but let it be later on. This morning I feel that the spring air
is getting into my head. I have an absurd desire to talk nonsense."

"So far," she admitted, "you haven't been altogether unsuccessful."

"If you are alluding," he replied, "to the personal remarks I was
emboldened to make on my way here, I can only say that they were
excused by their truthfulness."

"I am not at all sure that you have known me long enough to tell
me what colours suit me," she demurred.

"Then what will you say," he enquired, "if I admire the angle of
that quill in your hat?"

"Don't do it," she laughed. "If you continue like this, I may have
to go home."

"You have sent the car away," he reminded her cheerfully. "You
would simply have to sit upon the balcony and reflect upon your
wasted morning."

"I decline to talk upon the putting green," she said. "It puts me
off. If you will stand perfectly quiet and say nothing, I will
play the like."

They moved off presently to the next teeing ground.

"I don't believe this nonsense is good for our golf," she said.

"It is immensely good for us as human beings," he protested.

They had played the ninth hole and turned for home. On their right
now was a shimmering stretch of wet sand and a thin line of sea, in
the distance. The tide, receding, had left little islands of virgin
sand, grass tufted, the home of countless sea-gulls. A brown-sailed
fishing boat was racing for the narrow entrance to the tidal way.

"I am beginning to understand what there is about this coast which
fascinated my father so," he remarked.

"Are you?" she answered gravely. "Years ago I used to love it, but
not now."

He tried to change the subject, but the gloom had settled upon her
face once more.

"You don't know what it is like," she went on, as they walked side
by side after their balls, "to live day and night in fear, with no
one to talk to - no one, that is to say, who is not under the same
shadow. Even the voices of the wind and the sea, and the screaming
of the birds, seem to bring always an evil message. There is
nothing kindly or hopeful even in the sunshine. At night, when the
tide comes thundering in as it does so often at this time of the
year, one is afraid. There is so much to make one afraid!"

She had turned pale again, notwithstanding the sunshine and the
freshening wind. He laid his hand lightly upon her arm. She
suffered his touch without appearing to notice it.

"Ah, you mustn't talk like that!" he pleaded. "Do you know what
you make me feel like?"

She came back from the world of her own unhappy imaginings.

"Really, I forgot myself," she declared, with a little smile.
"Never mind, it does one good sometimes. One up, are you?
Henceforth, then, golf - all the rigour of the game, mind."

He fell in with her mood, and their conversation touched only upon
the game. On the last green he suffered defeat and acknowledged
it with a little grimace.

"If I might say so, Miss Fentolin," he protested, "you are a little
too good for your handicap. I used to play a very reasonable
scratch myself, but I can't give you the strokes."

"You must have travelled in many countries," she continued, "where
golf was an impossibility."

"Naturally," he admitted. "Let us stay and have lunch and try
again."

She shook her head with a little sigh of regret.

"You see, the car is waiting," she pointed out. "We are expected
home. I shan't be a minute putting my clubs away."

They sped swiftly along the level road towards St. David's Hall.
Far in the distance they saw it, built upon that strange hill,
with the sunlight flashing in its windows. He looked at it long
and curiously.

"I think," he said, "that yours is the most extraordinarily
situated house I have ever seen. Fancy a gigantic mound like that
in the midst of an absolutely flat marsh."

She nodded.

"There is no other house quite like it in England," she said. "I
suppose it is really a wonderful place. Have you looked at the
pictures?"

"Not carefully," he told her.

"You must before you leave," she insisted. "Mr. Fentolin is a great
judge, and so was his father."

Their road curved a little to the sea, and at its last bend they
were close to the pebbly ridge on which the Tower was built. He
touched the electric bell and stopped the car.

"Do let us walk along and have a look at my queer possession once
more," he begged. "Luncheon, you told me, is not till half-past
one, and it is a quarter to now."

She hesitated for a moment and then assented. They left the car
and walked along the little track, bordered with white posts, which
led on to the ridge. To their right was the village, separated
from them only by one level stretch of meadowland; in the background,
the hall. They turned along the raised dike just inside the pebbly
beach, and she showed her companion the narrow waterway up to the
village. At its entrance was a tall iron upright, with a ladder
attached and a great lamp at the top.

"That is to show them the way in at night, isn't it?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Yes," she told him. "Mr. Fentolin had it placed there. And yet,"
she went on, "curiously enough, since it was erected, there have
been more wrecks than ever."

"It doesn't seem a dangerous beach," he remarked.

She pointed to a spot about fifty yards from the Tower. It was the
spot to which the woman whom he had met on the day of his arrival
had pointed.

"You can't see them," she said; "they are always out of sight, even
when the tide is at the lowest - but there are some hideous sunken
rocks there. 'The Daggers,' they call them. One or two fishing
boats have been lost on them, trying to make the village. When Mr.
Fentolin put up the lamp, every one thought that it would be quite
safe to try and get in at night. This winter, though, there have
been three wrecks which no one could understand. It must be
something in the currents, or a sort of optical illusion, because
in the last shipwreck one man was saved, and he swore that at the
time they struck the rock, they were headed straight for the light."

They had reached the Tower now. Hamel became a little absorbed.
They walked around it, and he tried the front door. He found, as
he had expected, that it opened readily. He looked around him for
several moments.

"Your uncle has been here this morning," he remarked quietly.

"Very likely."

"That outhouse," he continued, "must be quite a large place. Have
you any idea what it is he works upon there?"

"None," she answered.

He looked around him once more.

"Mr. Fentolin has been preparing for my coming, he observed. "I
see that he has moved a few of his personal things."

She made no reply, only she shivered a little as she stepped back
into the sunshine.

"I don't believe you like my little domicile," he remarked, as they
started off homeward.

"I don't," she admitted curtly.

"In the train," he reminded her, "you seemed rather to discourage
my coming here. Yet last night, after dinner -"

"I was wrong," she interrupted. "I should have said nothing, and
yet I couldn't help it. I don't suppose it will make any difference."

"Make any difference to what?"

"I cannot tell you," she confessed. "Only I have a strange antipathy
to the place. I don't like it. My uncle sometimes shuts himself up
here for quite a long time. We have an idea, Gerald and I, that
things happen here sometimes which no one knows of. When he comes
back, he is moody and ill-tempered, or else half mad with excitement.
He isn't always the amiable creature whom you have met. He has the
face of an angel, but there are times -"

"Well, don't let's talk about him," Hamel begged, as her voice
faltered. "Now that I am going to stay in the neighbourhood for a
few days, you must please remember that it is partly your
responsibility. You are not going to shut yourself up, are you?
You'll come and play golf again?"

"If he will let me," she promised.

"I think he will let you, right enough," Hamel observed. "Between
you and me, I rather think he hates having me down at the Tower at
all. He will encourage anything that takes me away, even as far as
the Golf Club."

They were approaching the Hall now. She was looking once more as
she had looked last night. She had lost her colour, her walk was
no longer buoyant. She had the air of a prisoner who, after a brief
spell of liberty, enters once more the place of his confinement.
Gerald came out to meet them as they climbed the stone steps which
led on to the terrace. He glanced behind as he greeted them, and
then almost stealthily took a telegram from his pocket.

"This came for you," he remarked, handing it to Hamel. "I met the
boy bringing it out of the office."

Hamel tore it open, with a word of thanks. Gerald stood in front
of him as he read.

"If you wouldn't mind putting it away at once," he asked, a little
uncomfortably. "You see, the telegraph office is in the place, and
my uncle has a queer rule that every telegram is brought to him
before it is delivered."

Hamel did not speak for a moment. He was looking at the few words
scrawled across the pink sheet with a heavy black pencil:

"Make every enquiry in your neighbourhood
for an American, John P. Dunster, entrusted
with message of great importance, addressed to
Von Dusenberg, The Hague. Is believed to
have been in railway accident near Wymondham
and to have been taken from inn by young man
in motor-car. Suggest that he is being im-
properly detained."

Hamel crumpled up the telegram and thrust it into his pocket.

"By-the-by," he asked, as they ascended the steps, "what did you
say the name of this poor fellow was who is lying ill up-stairs?"

Gerald hesitated for a moment. Then he answered as though a species
of recklessness had seized him.